It’s actually in great demand to crop video on Mac when you desire to focus on a specific area in the video scene, or crop out unwanted sections. However, for some inexperienced novices, it may not be easy to choose a tool that they can manipulate independently. As a result, in this review, we’re going to show how to crop a video on Mac using top 3 popular methods without trouble.
For a Mac user, cropping video can be done with iMovie — the free video editor preinstalled in macOS. And in this article, we list 3 free options to crop a video on Mac with or without iMovie
Cropping a Video Using iMovie
Any discussion about free video editors to use on Mac remains incomplete without a mention of iMovie. It lets you create videos using background, titles, transitions, texts, and so on. You can also share, adjust color, mute, stabilize, rotate, crop, and so on. But the cropping aspect ratio is limited to 16:9.
The pros:
- A free video editor with a range of editing tools
- Easy to follow the steps to crop any video
The cons:
- Limited availability of media sources for enhancing a video
- The cropping aspect ratio remains limited to 16:9
Steps to crop a video using iMovie:
- Run iMovie, drag and drop your video to the editor’s timeline
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Look for the cropping button and go to the option ‘crop to fill.’
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Crop your video by moving and resizing the adjustable frame
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After you are okay with the cropping result, apply the change by clicking on the ‘Crop to fill’ option
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Go to the ‘File’ option under the ‘Share’ menu (under ‘File’ on the taskbar) for saving the cropped video
Cropping videos on Mac without using iMovie
In case you do not have iMovie or the free video editor is unable to crop videos in the aspect ratio you want, you have other useful free options for cropping a video on Mac. Take a look at these two options that ensure you no longer have to depend solely on iMovie.
QuickTime Player
You might be thinking that QuickTime Player is a media player on the macOS, so what has it got to do with video crop online? Well, QuickTime Player lets you record a part of your screen too. So, you can crop a video with the wanted aspect ratio simply by recording. But you will have to let go of the audio if you are planning to crop the video with QuickTime Player. Of course, you can make it work by cropping the video and adding a new audio track to it.
The pros
- A free video editor that doubles up as a media player
- Crop videos with your preferred aspect ratio
- Record and play videos at ease
The cons
- You need to record the video to crop it, making the process time-consuming.
- You will not get to keep any sounds in your cropped video
Steps to crop a video using QuickTime Player:
- Play the video and pause at your desired part
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Run the QuickTime Player app on Mac
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Click on the recording option under the ‘New Screen Recording’ in the drop-down list from ‘File.’
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Drag to get a part of the video recording
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Play your video by clicking on ‘Start Recording.’
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After the video plays out, hit the ‘Recording’ option and save your cropped video.
KAPWING
KAPWING is another useful online free video editor that not only lets you crop your videos but also enhances them through images, audio, texts, and subtitles. This video editor offers a number of aspect ratios like 1:1, 16:9, 9:16, 1:2.4, 4:5, 5:4, and 820:312. You can save your video in 720P or 1080P.
The pros
- A free editor with a range of video editing tools
- Crop videos in different aspect ratios
The cons
- It takes a lot of time to upload and process videos
- Risk of information leakage
Steps to crop a video using KAPWING:
- Sign in to Kapwing by navigating to it
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Upload your video to the platform
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Hit ‘Crop’ and select a ratio
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Click on ‘Done Cropping’ and ‘Export Video’
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Download and save the video
The Endnote
And that’s it! You no longer need to rely only on iMovies. You have two more useful options that you can look into if the features and aspect ratios of iMovies do not fulfill your requirements.
